Ancestry

FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT ANCESTRY - PAGE 4

The mother of everybody, according to scientists, was a woman who lived in Africa about 200,000 years ago. Researchers call her "Eve"; they do not know much about her, but what little they can tell us should be of interest to the whole family. "Eve" is not the first woman to bear human children. What makes her special is that she is the one person who would show up on everybody's family tree, the one ancestor all human beings have in common. Scientists settled on her instead of her male counterpart because they trace biologic ancestry by way of "mitochondria"--spe cial gene-carrying structures within cells--which are transmitted only through the mother.

QA man at my husband's office has offered to give us an 8-month-old puppy --make unknown. I know our children would love this, but I don`t want to discover that we`ve taken on a potentially huge animal, as our living space is limited. Is there any way to tell how big a pup it's going to become? ASorry, but there's no magic formula for arriving at this kind of prediction. With a puppy of unknown ancestry, there is no hard-and-fast rule for estimating how large it will grow. But here's a helpful hint: As a general rule, 8-week-old puppies are about one-fourth of their adult body weight.

In his 1992 race for re-election to the Senate, Alfonse D'Amato used a slogan that could only work in New York: "Gettin' it done. Makin' waves. Takin' em on." Last week, the New York Republican made the wrong kind of waves and took on the wrong sort of people. On Tuesday, lamenting the pace of the O.J. Simpson trial during an interview on a New York radio show, he adopted a pidgin Japanese accent that was supposed to mimic "little" Judge Lance Ito, who is no midget and happens to speaks English like the Californian he is. The reaction from Asian-Americans and others was one of shock and anger that a third-generation American of Japanese ancestry could be depicted as a strange foreigner merely because of the color of his skin.

In reply to Kaled Elgindy's remarks on Aug. 11, "Egyptian or African," I wish to make two points. The first point is that due to immigration and colonization, if one wants to specify ethnicity, three descriptions are necessary: color, land of ancestry and current residence. I am a black African-American. Mr. Elgindy claims to be a white ("caucasian," although probably in reality brown) African-American. Other examples are brown Turkish-German and yellow Asian-Peruvian (Peru's current president)

Mildred Blomstrand, passed away peacefully on Aug. 16 in Arlington Heights as a resident at Marriott's Health Care Center. Born Sept. 11, 1899 in Carlshend, MI to parents of Swedish ancestry, Frank and Hedwig Widlund. She came to Chicago and married William Wilmoth, whom she later divorced. She married Harold Blomstrand, a realtor. He died in the 1960's. She was active in the Order of the Eastern Star (OES) in Evanston, and received many honors during her lifetime. She is survived by her daughters Margaret Helikson, Brooksville, FL and Elaine Mercill, Cheyenne, WY; as well as eight grandchildren; 14 greatgrandchildren; and nine great-great-grandchildren.

Phoebe Chen, a retired professor in the Chicago City Colleges system who was active in Chinese-American community affairs, died Sunday in Lutheran General Hospital. She was 76. Mrs. Chen of Skokie helped establish the Chinese Cultural and Educational Association, which includes one of the first local non-profit Chinese language schools in Chicago. She also was a co-founder and former president of the Chinese American Educational Foundation, which provides scholarships to undergraduate and graduate school students who are of Chinese ancestry.

An Australian scientist who wrote a book saying DNA evidence contradicts ancestry claims in the Book of Mormon faces disciplinary action in a separate case that could bring excommunication from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Simon Southerton told The Associated Press he's been ordered to a July 31 hearing before church leaders in Canberra, Australia. Southerton's book "Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA and the Mormon Church" uses DNA data to argue against Book of Mormon teachings that ancient America's inhabitants descended from Israelites.

Paul V. Boehlen's letter (March 25) was 90 percent on target expressing his annoyance with hyphenated continental "land mass" adjectives that identify the ancestral heritage of certified American citizenry. I seriously doubt if these new-found "politically correct" identifications will bring America "down" as he stated, yet this labeling does segregate Americans into the very ethnic and racial categories our ancestors eschewed when they fled the oppressions of their birthplace.

THE ART OF SCANDAL By Douglass Shand-Tucci (HarperPerennial $15) A detailed biography of the iconoclastic Boston art patron who endowed one of the city's most famous museums. THROUGH THE SAFETY NET By Charles Baxter (Vintage $13) Eleven short, intelligent pieces of fiction that explore middle-class American life. FEMALE MASCULINITY By Judith Halberstam (Duke University Press $17.95) A study on the protected status of male masculinity and its female alternative.

For most of Thursday, I`ve felt like I was in the middle of a civil war. All because I wrote about a wedding. In case you missed it, the column was about a young lady of Croatian ancestry who will wed a young man of Serbian ancestry on Saturday. At virtually the last minute, the Croatian band that was to play at the wedding backed out of their contract. The band leader said he will not play for Serbians because of the terrible strife in the land of his fathers. The bride-to-be was heartbroken, and I am a sucker for heartbroken young ladies, so I wrote about her sadness.